My team ended up #12. I was a little dissapointed by my "Change Agents," expecially Ruben Hinojosa who didn't score any points on legislation. Also, the Rookie Rahm Emanuel surprised me because I thought that as a leader in the Democratic Party, he would be more aggressive. But I now think that both these players are more of a backup team members and in order to get support on bills, you need a lot of those! I learned that there are people who are the "stars" in the Congress, people who are the front persons to lead major efforts to pass legislation. I also learned that many bills get introduced by one person but never gained much support. The legislators can then tell their constituants that they are busy introducing bills, even if those bills don't go anywere at all. That was very interesting to see.
I also learned that senority is a huge factor in who sponsors legislation. The Upper Senators were, far and away, the ones who introduced the most legislation. I imagine that many of their bills might come from a more collaborative process, but that these senior leaders are asked and expected to be the front person.I think that the game is very instructive but only if the student takes the time to get out of their game page and browse the site. One thing that could draw in more understanding is if there was a news crawl at the bottom of every page, like the stock ticker on TV, that would show the bill numbers that had some new activity that week. They already do show those on the "Research Legislation" page, but if it was spruced up into a real time crawl, that might grab more attention and encourage clickthroughs to learn more about those individual bills.
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